Cancer Survivor Mark Herzlich Defies The Odds With His Debut In The NFL

Last night was a big night for Mark Herzlich pictured above on this card we just pulled from SAGE 5 Star, one of the best boxes of premium football cards we’ve opened this year. (If you haven’t seen our box break, check it out using this link.)  It would have been a big night for Herzlich even if he hadn’t recorded 2 tackles and 2 assists.  Last night was his first start in an NFL game.  While that is a big accomplishment for any rookie, it is an even more impressive accomplishment because Herzlich is a cancer survivor. 

Already a standout at Boston College as a First-team All-American and the ACC Defensive Player of the Year in 2008, Herzlich was ranked as the 45th best prospect for the 2009 NFL.  As he was preparing for senior year, then at the age of 21, Herzlich was diagnosed with Ewing’s Sarcoma, a rare form of bone cancer found mostly in the pelvis, femur, and ribs.  Using the same drive and determination he displayed on the gridiron, Herzlich went into treatment and was cancer free inside of four and a half months, an amazing turnaround.  He wasn’t able to play in 2009, but he came back strong in 2010 and was honored with the Maxwell Football Club Courage Award, Disney Spirit Award and Rudy Award along the way.

Herzlich went undrafted in 2011 but was picked up shortly after by the New York Giants.  As he took the field last night, the camera showed his parents full of pride, having gone down this road with Mark.  As the National Anthem played, it sunk in for Herzlich that this was finally happening, the moment he had been waiting for his whole life.  Hopefully, Herzlich is at the beginning of a long career in the NFL.  We need players like him who inspire all of us.

2011 Panini NFL Stickers For Week 11 And Players To Watch This Week

We are in week 11 of filling in our 2011 Panini NFL Sticker Collection Album and the football season.  Last week Matt Ryan and Arian Foster had huge games, Ryan with 351 Passing Yards and 2 Passing TDs, Foster with 84 rushing yard, 102 receiving yards and 2TDs.  Dwayne Bowe, on the other hand, had 2 catches for 14 total yards.

Here are the three players to watch this week

Ryan Fitzpatrick led the Buffalo Bills to a strong start but has been struggling the last few games.  This week he will be up against the Miami Dolphins who have been trending the opposite way with an awful "suck for luck" start but have been finding ways to win lately.  This should be a make or break kind of week for the Bills with the potential for a good game.

Wes Welker of the New England Patriots has been dealing with a knee injury, but should be ready for Monday Night's game.  As Tom Brady's go to receiver, Welker should see plenty of action against the Kansas City Chiefs venerable short game defense.

Michael Turner of the Atlanta Falcons has been putting up respectable numbers.  The Falcons are up against a strong pass defense in the Tennessee Titans, so Turner should see plenty of opportunities to move the ball.

In addition to the players to watch this week, her are the stickers going into our album.

Larry Fitzgerald, Michael Vick, Darren Sproles

Darren McFadden, Reggie Wayne, Andre Johnson

Cincinnati Bengals, Carson Palmer, Colt McCoy, Arian Foster

Reggie Wayne, Maurice Jones-Drew, Tim Tebow, Brandon Lloyd

Antonio Gates, Vincent Jackson, Eli Manning, Steve Smith

Denver Broncos, Seattle Seahawks, St. Louis Rams, New York Jets

Brian Urlacher, DeAngelo Hall, LeSean McCoy, Philadelphia Eagles

Ndamukong Suh, Matthew Stafford, Clay Matthews, Charles Woodson

Jared Allen, Sidney Rice, Matt Ryan, Michael Turner

Steve Smith, DeAngelo Williams, Marques Colston, Mike Williams

Dominique Rogers-Cromartie, Sam Bradford, Frank Gore, Matt Hasselbeck

Von Miller, 2010 Pro Bowl, XLV Super Bowl, Chris Hamburger

This week we have five more completed teams.

The Denver Broncos

The New York Giants

The Atlanta Falcons

The San Francisco 49ers

The Seattle Seahawks

Be on the look out for more additions to our sticker album next week.

A Different Kind Of Rainbow Collecting With 2011 Topps Heritage Baseball

Normally when collectors try to obtain rainbows, a complete set of all the parallels of one card, they concentrate on releases like Bowman Baseball, Topps Chrome or Topps Finest that contain a large number of colored and patterned parallels and refractors. 

If you follow this blog you know I’ve done a lot of posts on 2011 Topps Heritage Baseball Cards, a set of cards that was based on the 1962 release of Topps Baseball. That original 1962 release had plenty of errors and printing mishaps.  The current design team really captured the feel of that set for the 2011 release of Heritage, making it a fun set of cards to collect.

2011 Topps Heritage Baseball has green tinted cards just like those in the 1962 release for cards numbered 110-158 and 160 -196.  The green tints were also paralleled in a red tint for packs found at Target and blue tint for packs found at Walmart. 

Then there is a set of 100 Chrome cards, numbered to 1962, based on various cards from the entire 500-card set.  These were also paralleled as refractors, green refractors, black border refractors and regular black-bordered cards found in 3 pack blisters.

Separately, there really wasn’t much to collect as a run of parallels, 4 cards for the base and tints, 5 cards for the chromes.  But I did notice there was a small number of tint cards that also came in chrome versions. While the numbering is different in their tint and chrome versions, every other element of these cards is identical. 

So here is a different kind of rainbow, the 9 card 2011 Topps Heritage Baseball rainbow of Brad Lidge, front and back.

 Base Card

 Green Tint

 Red Tint

 Blue Tint

Non-Chrome Black Border

 Green Refractor

 Chrome #/1962

 Chrome Refractor #/562

 Black Border Chrome Refractor #/62

I mentioned there are only a small number of cards, 13 of them, which will work.  Here is the complete list.

Bronson Arroyo – 120 & C25

Miguel Cabrera – 150 & C4

Kyle Drabek – 114 & C24

Jonny Gomes – 148 & C29

Aaron Hill – 123 & C26

Omar Infante – 130 & C27

Paul Konerko – 195 & C34

Brad Lidge – 111 & C22

Mike Pelfrey – 183 & C32

Jhonny Peralta – 173 & C31

Babe Ruth Special – Babe Joins Yanks – 136 & C28

Freddy Sanchez – 188 & C49

Kurt Suzuki – 184 & C33

There is only one other player that appears in both the tint series and chrome, Mark Teixeira.  But you will not be able to build a rainbow because he appears on two different base set cards and his tint series cards use his base card #110

and his chrome and black border cards use his base card #400.

In the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing with you another rainbow, one that spans different releases. Perhaps we should call it an Uber Rainbow.

2011 SAGE 5 Star Football Box Break Recap and Review

Have you picked up a box of 2011 SAGE 5 Star Football yet?  If your answer is no, what are you thinking?  At an unbelievable 24 cards, all hits. with at least 40 autographs, SAGE 5 Star is, by far, the most voluminous Rookie Auto prospector box out there.

SAGE does not give odds of pulling hits, since every card is a hit, but they have released a detailed checklist, which I’ve used to approximate odds for you.  Please keep in mind these are not official odds and I might be slightly off, but I don’t think by much.  Figuring a production run of about 800 boxes, the odds of pulling this year’s holy grail, a Cam Newton Auto, are about 1 in 37 cards, about 1 in every 1.5 boxes.  Is there another product out there you can think of that provides those kinds of odds?

2011 SAGE 5 Star Football, incredibly, fits into our premium cards category.  You would think this would be an Ultra Premium, product, but at about $10 a card it is still within reach of most collectors. Each box contains 8 packs with 3 cards each. Each 8 pack box contains 40 autographs on 24 cards with one triple autograph card on average.

Here are the cards we pulled from the box.

Single Signatures

 First Round Picks - Mark Ingram, Aldon Smith

 First Round Pick - Julio Jones, Second Round Pick - Torrey Smith

Second Round Picks - Rahim Moore and Da'Quan Bowers

Sixth Round Pick - Allen Bradford, Undrafted - Currently on IR with the Houston Texans Lestar Jean

Double Signatures

 Mark Ingram & Casey Matthews, Aldon Smith & Ryan Kerrigan

 Charles Clay & Daniel Thomas, Chimdi Chekwa & Denarius Moore

 Doubles of Kyle Rudolph and Charlie Gantt

 Jordan Todman & Delone Carter, Luke Stocker & Charlie Gantt

 Mark Herzlich & Anthony Castonzo, Cecil Shorts III & Jeremy Kerley

 Shane Vereen & Stevan Ridley, Nate Solder & Shane Vereen

 Rob Housler & Sam Acho, T.J. Yates & Jeff Maehl

Jeff Maehl & Casey Matthews

Triple Signatures

Auburn Teammates - Cam Newton, Nick Fairley & Mario Fannin

Overall Look

For an unlicensed product (no team logos) these look good.  SAGE has done a nice job of getting a lot of the players in uniforms without any visible logos.  Clearly some care has been taken with the autos.  It was a rare occurrence that signatures went off the stickers used, which probably meant there was careful supervision of the signing processes.  Write-ups and stats on the backs of the cards work well.

Quality and Variety of Players

The most desirable Rookies are all here, 70 names of the recent Rookie class.  Only 14 of those players were undrafted, but eventually picked up by teams.  We pulled one player who is no longer with a team. All other players who are not on team rosters, only a handful, are either on a practice squad or on IR.

Do the Hits satisfy?

Even if you are not happy with an autograph card, there are 23 others.  We pulled 8 First Round picks, 6 second round picks, 2 third round picks, and 6 fourth round picks.  In total, we hit autos for 33 different players, almost half of those available in this product. Not too shabby.

Will you keep coming back for more?

This one box probably contained more autograph hits than all the other boxes of football cards we’ve opened this year combined.  The only thing that should dictate how much SAGE 5 Star you buy is your budget.  Get your hands on as many boxes as you can.

Rating

5 out of 5

2011 SAGE 5 Star Football is an amazing offering for rookie prospectors.